VOICES OF DEMOCRACY THAT HAVE SHAPED AMERICA’S HISTORY

Forty-one speeches, letters, and other documents deemed significant in this country’s history, wrapped in succinct explanatory notes and glosses.

This revised and expanded collection updates the 1999 edition with three entries: George W. Bush’s saber-rattling response to the 9/11 attacks; Barack Obama’s answer to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s inflammatory sermon; and portions of the Supreme Court’s decision regarding marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges. The editors also (pointedly?) add Alexander Hamilton’s views on an independent judiciary from the Federalist Papers and (along with swapping in Ronald Reagan’s “Tear down the wall” speech for his homiletic farewell address) give a roster of contributors that already included Shirley Chisholm, Red Cloud, and César Chávez even more diversity by switching out a passage from Uncle Tom’s Cabin for Frederick Douglass’ blunt, unsparing “Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro.” The period illustrations and historical commentary that accompany each primary text have likewise been added to or reworked to include, for instance, references to Black Lives Matter, President Donald Trump’s immigration orders, and the fact that, like women and servants, Native Americans were also excluded from the Mayflower Compact. But in general the arc here does bend toward justice, and though the contents offer at best piecemeal glimpses of this country’s complicated history and character, they do illuminate its tapestry of divisive issues and unifying ideals.

HOW WOMEN TOOK THE WHEEL AND DROVE BOLDLY INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Well-documented proof that, when it came to early automobiles, it wasn’t just men who took the wheel.

Despite relentlessly flashy page design that is more distracting than otherwise and a faint typeface sure to induce eyestrain, this companion to Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (2011) chronicles decided shifts in gender attitudes and expectations as it puts women (American women, mostly) behind the wheel in the first decades of the 20th century. Sidebar profiles and features, photos, advertisements, and clippings from contemporary magazines and newspapers festoon a revved-up narrative that is often set in angular blocks for added drama. Along with paying particular attention to women who went on the road to campaign for the vote and drove ambulances and other motor vehicles during World War I, Macy recounts notable speed and endurance races, and she introduces skilled drivers/mechanics such as Alice Ramsey and Joan Newton Cuneo. She also diversifies the predominantly white cast with nods to Madam C.J. Walker, her daughter, A’Lelia (both avid motorists), and the wartime Colored Women’s Motor Corps. An intro by Danica Patrick, checklists of “motoring milestones,” and an extended account of an 1895 race run and won by men do more for the page count than the overall story—but it’s nonetheless a story worth the telling.

THE DARING RESCUE OF HORSES KIDNAPPED DURING WORLD WAR II

Letts adapts her bestselling 2016 work of the same title for young readers.

As World War II sweeps across Europe, the fates of several master horsemen become entwined. In Poland, Andrzej Kristalovich, head of the national stud farm, sees his life’s work disappear when Russian soldiers capture his horses. Nazi Germans, invading next, restore some of the animals in order to breed them for the Third Reich. Meanwhile, in Vienna, Olympic medalist Alois Podhajsky is desperately trying to care for the Lipizzan stallions at the famed Spanish Riding School even as the invading Germans capture the Lipizzan stud farms and move most of the horses to Czechoslovakia. Meanwhile, at an American Army base in Kansas, Maj. Hank Reed is overseeing the cavalry’s transition from horses, no longer useful in warfare, to mechanized vehicles. These threads come together at the end of the war when Reed orchestrates a complex rescue of both sets of horses. This is not a particularly successful adaptation. It’s shorter than the original, but both the storyline and timeline are fragmented, making it difficult for the putative audience of 8- to 12-year-olds to follow, and extraneous details fail to advance the main narrative. Aside from a map and archival images (both not seen), there is no timeline or other visual aid to help organize the narrative. Characters are all white.

If readers can make sense of this story, they’re likely able to tackle the original instead.
(author’s note, characters, bibliography)
(Nonfiction. 10-14)